Inclination
by Live.Write.Love01
Summary: Caterina Valentine fell into a bad habit. And now, she couldn't get herself out of it. Because when you have nothing left to burn, you have to burn yourself. In segments; one-shot.


**Hi guys, just a random one-shot I felt like doing, kind of personally influence in exception to some areas. It's in segments, as I told you in the summary, and it's post "A Film by Dale Squires" episode, season one.**

*****_Russian language_

***Russian Translation**

**I hope you enjoy this and happy reading! :)**

**1**

She started doing things she normally wouldn't with influential people the night they had begun filming the short film with Dale Squires. And by influential, she would mean persons with demeanors and personalities that had attracted her attention immediately.

Evidently, the boys she had met the day at Venice Beach.

They weren't exactly whom she had thought them to be once she hung out with them more and more, as well as two other girls in which she had quickly made friends with, but she couldn't complain or deny the fact that she liked it. They were different than her normal group of close, tight-knit friends; they were somewhat like Jade, the bad girl of the school, her best friend, but in a way they were very different. They did things that the gothic, bad girl wouldn't/refused to do and they had a good, fun time while doing it. With kind hearts they treated each other like a band of brothers and sisters, with a few exceptions, and were there for each other no matter what. It reminded her greatly of her group, just with more people and different ways of handling certain situations and having fun.

Chase McCormack, a brawny 17 year old student of Bakersfield High, quarterback of his local football team. He was, with the short brown hair and flirtatious smile, the one whom had wrapped his arms around her petite form that day at the beach when she was making the clay pot, and convinced her to stay for the Tuna Tar-Tar with a charming gleam within his eyes.

Travis Holbrook, the tall and lean boy with the dark ebony fringe and handsome face that would make any girl swoon. He was naturally good hearted, funny and easy to make conversation with. With a natural talent for playing the guitar and composing music like Andre, she was surprised he hadn't auditioned to Hollywood Arts yet – she didn't doubt that he would make it in straight away; Principal Ikner wouldn't know what hit him. Of course, she supposed Andre was better and always will be, but she couldn't deny that Travis had a real knack for it. If asked, she would tell you he was her personal favorite.

One would not consider these two boys to be absolute junkies.

And the other two, Michael Gonzales and Christopher Sutton, might as well have been the weird openly bad ones of the group. Albeit they were kind to anyone, stars of the football team, they enjoyed bragging and theft of innocence. She wouldn't consider herself completely innocent, she had dealt with quite a lot, but she had supposed nearly all of it was stripped from her when she met these two boys outside of the beach, away from her friends and at a local school football game (Sherwood against Bakersfield; she wouldn't have went should she not have gotten a text from Travis asking her to come), when they proved to be entirely different people than she would have suspected. Smoked when they wanted too, drank when they wanted to, cussed like sailors and flirted like pimps. She was, as well as Nicole Lehman and Ashley Henderson, their "bitches."

But she enjoyed their company all the same. Altogether, the seven of them would have a blast – either in abandoned buildings out of Los Angeles or in town, at the mall, the schools at night, someone's house (usually Chase's)…and if she was to be brutally honest, something she didn't like being at all, she liked hanging out with them a lot more than she did her other friends. Granted, she loved them all to bits and pieces, Andre and Jade especially, but none of them looked at her like she was a freak, like she was weird and had psychological problems. They didn't hurt her feelings; instead, they boosted them, made her feel like a normal person for once in her life. Although she didn't have to change to impress them, or be a certain way, the temptation was abnormally strong.

Caterina Valentine fell into a bad habit. And now she couldn't get herself out of it.

* * *

><p>"You know what guys? I'm not all that hungry" Cat said with a sigh, resting a hand upon her flat stomach as they hastily exited the <em>Up Late With Mack Murphy<em> show set "I think I'll pass on the waffles."

"But it was your idea" Tori frowned.

"Come on, we always get waffles on Wednesdays." Said Andre with a light hearted smile, nearly making her melt.

"And how are you not hungry?" Asked Jade as she crossed her arms, looking skeptical, "you haven't eaten since breakfast at my place."

"I know, but I'm just not really hungry, and besides, my mom probably wants me home so I can babysit my brother because he's on his special medication. See you guys tomorrow!" She explained with a shrug and giggle, and before the Latina, Jade nor Andre could answer her, she turned swiftly upon her heels and walked away, earphones blasting Breathless, by Asking Alexandria within her ears with loud screams and the sweet sound of metal.

And, as her back faced them, she fished a cigarette from her pocket.

* * *

><p>"<em>Katerina Xhanna Valentine<em>!" Her mother shouted in fluent Russian the moment she walked into the door after coming to her rattled home the morning after a wild night of alcohol and drugs. She was holding a piece of paper within her hands, one on her hip, and glaring daggers at her only daughter, whom, unbeknownst to her, had a massive hangover and felt like disappearing from the face of the earth.

"_Chto?_" '**What?'** She inquired, slightly bewilderedly and drowsily as she shut the door behind her, eyebrows shooting up to her hairline as she contemplated what she had done. As far as she was concerned, her parents had no idea of who she was hanging around and what she was doing; granted, she didn't even know what it was.

"_Vash tabelʹ prishli v eto utro. Chto eto za yerunda? V protivnom sluchae matematika snova? Nuzhdayushchiesya v uluchshenii na akterskie kursy?_" **'Your report card came in this morning. What is this nonsense? Failing maths again? Needing improvement in acting class?' **Mila Valentine explained irrationally, shaking the slip of paper in her face as if in need of an emphasis. Baffled, Cat snatched the yellow paper from her hands and, resisting the urge to burst into spontaneous tears at the vague, candid thought of needing to improve in Sikowitz's class, her favorite other than singing, she chewed on the inside of her cheek.

"_Daĭte mne peredokhnutʹ, matematika ne tak __prosto__, __kak__ eto __bylo__, __kogda__vy__byli__ v __shkole__! __Moya__zhizn__ʹ ne __sosredotochena__ vokrug __nego__!_" **'Give me a break, maths isn't as easy as it was when you were in school! My life isn't focused around it!' **She argued back, something she had rarely ever done. Cat and her mother had gotten along extremely well albeit of the times she and her father, Kiril, had abandoned her, and she knew when to back off when she was in trouble. But something just snapped.

"_My __platim__ za Vas __prinyat__ʹ __uchastie__ v etoĭ shkole dlya vashikh talantov, i eto ne budetproblemoĭ dlya vas iz etogo_!" **'We pay for you to attend this school for your talents, and it will not be a problem to take you out of it!' **

Cat, in too much shock that her mother had actually threatened to make her leave Hollywood Arts, her beloved school, said nothing in reply.

"_Podnimite vashi klassy_" '**Pick up your grades'** Said Mila firmly, walking away, "_ili vy mozhete poproshchatʹsya s gollivudskoĭ iskusstv_" **'Or you can say goodbye to Hollywood Arts.'**

Again, without another word, she walked out from her home once again. This time, she left with a cigarette between her lips.**  
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* * *

><p>"Is that Cat with them?" Beck asked incredulously as he attempted to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the street, focused intently upon the group of punkish teenagers sitting upon the lawn of the Church, smoke coming in puffs from their mouths, bottles of several alcoholic beverages scattered and within their palms and hardcore, scream music eliciting from a PearPod. He had noticed the pale redhead amongst them, however couldn't believe it, and his mouth acted before his brain – he needed to make sure that he wasn't the only one who had seen her, as mad as that seemed.<p>

"Yeah…yeah I think it is! Why would she be with them?" Tori questioned her reply, leaning forward with a furrowed brow. Jade turned to look as well, her expression expeditiously changing from neutral to utter disbelief, eyebrows knitting together.

"Look at her," said his girlfriend, baffled. They all did; Cat was laughing loudly as she leaned against another male's chest, another girl laying atop of her own self with another laying across from them all, but appeared to have no idea what was going on. The other boys around them were, as predicted, singing loudly and terribly to the scream music blasting from what he could see, as his friends PearPod, rather the others. Beck shook his head. "She's high as Hell."

"So, should we go over there and take her home?" Andre inquired with his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking rather menacingly at the boy in which Cat was leaning against (who had an arm around her, hand a little too close to her chest for both his and his musical friends liking, though she didn't seem to mind or notice).

"I think we should – I mean this isn't like her!" The Latina with high cheekbones agreed, hands finding skinny hips defiantly. Jade scowled and rolled her eyes.

"No." She growled firmly, brown, curly hair elegantly falling into her eyes as she shook her head. "We can, and will, deal with her tomorrow. We go over there now we're just going to start unneeded shit that I don't feel like resolving."

"Since when did she start burning?" Asked Beck as he observed her take a drag from her cigarette and exhale a tuft of smoke from her parted lips.

"Dunno," Said Jade, nearly sounding disappointed, "whenever she started hanging out with _them_."

* * *

><p>When she came into school, three days later, water bottle half empty yet filled with vodka and cranberry juice, already tipsy and nearly drunk, the gang came to the conclusion that this needed to stop, horrified by her actions.<p>

Jade took her home immediately, chucking the bottle into the garbage can on her way out, but not without a good stabbing to it with her scissors, making sure to puncture it as maliciously as she could, as though it was a person, for slowly ruining her best friend's life. Andre, Beck, Tori and Robbie had all agreed to come with her, but taking separate cars. The Goth wanted a personal word with this girl, whether she liked it or not.

"Cat, listen-"

"I know what you're gonna say, silly Sally" Giggled the other girl as she fiddled with her crimson hair, twirling it within her fingers with a glimmering smile. "Betcha don' know why~" her words were slurring as she sang, and Jade's fists tightened around the wheel of the other girls car.

"Why." Her reply was not a question, a demand.

"Hehe, why what?"

"Why everything! Why are you doing this to yourself! Smoking, drinking, getting high? It doesn't make sense!" Jade shouted loudly, rage pouring and lacing her voice. To any passerby in the lanes beside her, she might have looked mental, and she had to resist slamming her fist against the wheel, or else she'd lose control and wazz of another driver, and she was in no mood to deal with any of that at this point. She wanted answers, and she was going to get them. "It's _not you_!"

"I'm not me?" Cat asked in a screech and gasp, covering her mouth with her hands. "Then who am I?"

"Honestly, I have no fucking clue who you are at this point. But your sure as hell not the same Caterina Valentine I knew to be as my best friend."

* * *

><p>When she walked to Andre's house in the middle of the night because her father and mother had kicked her out for however long they had decided, she realized she needed to change.<p>

"Little Red, you're destroying yourself."

"When there's nothing left to burn, you have to burn yourself Andre."

* * *

><p>He kissed her that night, and she didn't realize she needed to change, she <em>knew.<em>

It's a shame she couldn't.

* * *

><p>"This," Beck gestured to the blunt as she lit it upon the porch of her front yard weeks later. "This needs to stop. Now."<p>

Cat stared into the eyes of each of her friends, then to the cigarette burning and eliciting exhaust between her fingers, eyes bearing confliction and hardship. With a gulp, she mustered all the strength she possibly could and closed her eyes with a deep exhale.

She dropped the burned out cigarette to the pavement.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review! I'd really appreciate it! :)<strong>


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